p. 8 | HELEN OF TROY

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 16, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 24.

HELEN OF TROY.

HELEN OF TROY bent over a table in the city of her nativity, and ironed, ironed, ironed hour after hour, all day long, silently pushing aside with red and swollen hands the polished white cuffs which found their way to every part of the civilized world. For the modern Helen was a "Troy laundry girl."

Had you told her that the work done by her hands was actually sent, not only to every part of her own land, but to Europe and the islands of the sea, she would have stared dully at you, without in the least comprehending the scope of her work. For in the curriculum of the school in which her education had been shaped, the only geography known was that of the streets. The whole world outside of Troy was labeled and set aside as "Unexplored territory."

The thoroughfare on which stood the tenement in which she was born was of that order common to our older cities, in which the proportion had long since been lost between the number of inhabitants, human, canine, and feline, and the visible supply of clothing and food—as had that also between the Christian graces and the degradation and filth.

Duke's Alley was, in point of fact, the "Five Points" of thrifty, Christian, modern Troy.

Helen was a child of the alley. Twenty years before our story opens, she had been born, the child of a thief, the first offspring of a marriage with a feeble-minded girl, poor and degraded as himself, not a parentage calculated to endow its children with shining virtues by any known laws of heredity.

For ten years she had fought, and scratched, and sworn her way through life in Duke's Alley, and "held her own with the best of them," which, interpreted by the outer world, would have read, "the worst of them."

In the ten years almost as many little brothers and sisters had successively come, wailed out for a shorter or longer period their feeble protest against the hard conditions of

their environment, and gone the silent way. Only one had survived the struggle—Rhoda, four years younger than Helen.

The neighbors had been heard to say, "It's lucky Bill's folks' young 'uns dies off, for I don't know how they'd ever raise 'em, 'n' they wouldn't be good for nothin' if they did raise 'em."

Bill's folks were not held in high esteem, even in Duke's Alley.

"Don't let any on 'em lick ye, Nell. Let 'em know ye're as good as any of 'em," had been the parental counsel.

Bill's idea of "goodness" was not, perhaps, that held by his Christian and philanthropic fellow-citizens in the broader and less crowded streets near by. To Bill its metes and bounds were grit—muscle. In the society of the alley, "I'm as good a man as he," freely translated, would have been, "He can't lick me."

Helen's leanings towards "goodness" had been developed solely on this line. Untaught, defiant, stupid, the one tender spot in her heart was her love for Rhoda.

"Lay a hand on Rhody 'n' I'll scratch yer eyes out," was an edict frequently issued against her companions of the alley, and they knew that safety lay in obedience.

An epidemic swept over the city, and Duke's Alley was decimated. When the health officers invaded and carried out its stricken inmates, kind Mrs. Murphy, next door, took Nell and Rhoda into her room behind the saloon, to stay until their parents' return. But an adversary "better" than Bill had at last tested strength with him, and he was forced to yield. What could be expected of Bill's wife but that she should do now what she had unquestioningly done through all her wedded life, follow Bill? So they never came back to the tenement in Duke's Alley.

Mistress Murphy told the orphans their parents were dead. To Nell's dull intellect it meant little beyond a cessation of kicks and blows. She had not yet grappled with the problem of the food and clothing supply.

Mistress Murphy solved it for her. "It's here ye'll stay, and ye'll help me in the saloon for the bit of a bite and a sup ye'll nade; and as for Rhody, why, what'll kape one will kape two."

"But I'm thinkin' what I'll do wid her at all to kape her out o' the way, for it's no earthly use she is for work, and she'll be in the way in the saloon."

"It's thinkin' I am I'll jist sind her around to the public school to kape her out o' the way."

School for Rhody! Nell seized upon the idea greedily, as something which, in a dim, mysterious manner, was to differentiate Rhoda from the denizens of the alley, and give her a place among the children whom, in her envy, she had jeered at as "bigbugs."

So Nell was to continue, unquestioningly, a part of the life of the alley; but Rhoda was to take her place in the world outside. The heart of poor, deprived Nell swelled, not with envy, but with pride.

Three years more passed. In school Rhoda easily outranked the children of her age. Absorbing unconsciously something of respectability, the saloon, with its brawling men and women, the saloon, which was to Nell the incarnate idea of life and pleasure, became to Rhoda intolerable.

"I hate it, Nell—the drinking and the fighting. I wish we didn't live here."

The words sank deep into Nell's heart, though she could not sympathize with the feeling which prompted them.

Day by day she pondered. She settled her plan doggedly before she ventured to unfold it to Mistress Murphy.

"I'm going into a laundry to work. Me an' Rhody 'is goin' to take a room an' live. You're good to us, but it's the drinkin' an' the cussin' an' all, Rhody can't stand."

Now Mistress Murphy's theory that "what'll kape one'll kape two," while plausible enough as a theory, had failed in the testing. She not only consented to Nell's plan, but she helped her with such disabled furniture as she could spare.

And now, for seven years, Helen of Troy had been the breadwinner. It had been no light struggle, but somehow it had been done, and Rhoda had never known that the dinner box Nell carried daily to the laundry was often carried empty.

"Rhody is goin' to graduate next week; I'm havin' her a lovely new dress made, 'n' she'll look as good as any on 'em," said Helen to the girl who worked next to her in the laundry.

"Yes; an' ye'll drop down dead in yer tracks before the day, if ye don't stop. It's worked to the bone ye are now wid sindin' Rhody to school. She's no better to come into the laundry an' earn her livin' 'n you are."

The old spirit of "lay a hand on Rhody 'n' I'll scratch yer eyes out," flashed from the eyes of Helen. It was only for a moment; the years had taught her to conquer.

"Rhody's goin' to be a teacher. The board has promised her a place as soon as she graduates. She won't never have no such struggle as I've had. I'm goin' to take it a little easier, too, when she gits so she can take care of herself."

"Yes," muttered Bridget, "if ye're alive. It's many's the day I've seen ye iron all day wid an empty stomach. I'll warrant Rhody didn't study without a bite of somethin'."

"Rhody didn't know, Bridget. I would not want she should."

Commencement day it was whispered that the girl who led her class was Bill's daughter; that by hard study she had worked herself up from the life of the slums.

But what mention of Helen? "Any more of Bill's family living?" inquired a guest.

"Yes, one. She's only a laundry girl, can't read nor write. I should hope, if I were Rhoda, she would not find it convenient to be present to-day."

It had not "been convenient." With fevered face and glassy eyes she lay on her poor bed at home.

"I guess I fainted, or somethin', to-day, Rhody. It was hot ironin', and I was so tired."

She never went back to the laundry. Three months later, when Rhoda was fairly installed as public school teacher, Helen of Troy, Nell of the alley, folded her tired hands, no longer red and swollen, and went to rest—an humble, unknown life went out. With patient toil she had lifted a human life to a higher plane. "They also serve who only stand and wait." Who shall estimate her work? "Only a laundry girl," but her influence may be felt through the ages.—N. Y. Observer.